The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1887-05-18

Office Grand girls IN the downtown estab-
lishments, side by side with men. No one
who comes to New York can fail to notice
it, says Julian Ralph, the well-known cor
respondent. Women are seen in great
majority of the large counting-rooms and
general offices, and one runs across them
in the chambers of lawyers, aud even IN
those smallest business places wherein one
man conducts an agency or consulting
room. apd the girl he employs is alone
with him great part of the time. New
avenues are thus opened to thousands
upon thousands of women to an extent
that may without exaggeration be
said TO have created revolution
in the opportunities and surroundings OF
the sex. That this change in her relation
ship to man whereby she works with him
all day six days in the week must affect the
sex and be felt by society it needs no re-
Election for any one to perceive. Last week
/ spent some time in discussing with men
and women who have given the subject
thought what that effect is or Is to be.
What learned was too interesting and too
important for one letter, and L was obliged
to leave some of il for this one. To those
who did not see that collection of opinions
it is only necessary to add that not one con-
trad!cted what now follows. Those inter-
views concern the effect of woman's daily
association with man in commercial houses.
This deals with the same relationship in
other places.
In the operating room OF the Western
Union Telegraph Company, at dizzy
height above the roofs and many of the
towers of the city, seven hundred men and
women, mainly between the ages of eigh-
teen and thirty five, manipulate the cleo
trio machines that scatter and receive the
telegraphic correspondence of the me,rop-
oils. For several years women have been
employed side by side with men In this
great work room, and, as the sex have
never been divided, but almost every girl
or woman has been brought mt one time or
another TO the side of almost every man,
this is splendid vantage point for study
ing the problem presented by this new
phase of city life.
The questions that ii was necessary to
ask / first put to Mr.. William j. Dealey,
the manager, who, fortunately for the
reader, is very thoughtful, observant, and
broad minded man, and had given the sub
iect much attention. Better yet, he was
willing to be interviewed, even among the
cares and complex requirements of his
position.
HAS it been your experience" l in
quired, that ladies in business lose their
feminine ambition TO marry and keep
house? Do they marry in any less proper
ton in BUSINESS than they do from the
homes of the land?"
MY experience" said Mr.. Dealey, lis
| that ladies in business become to n certain
extent independent, consequently more
self reliant, naturally more eXacting, more
critical, less sentimental, better able gen.
orally to take care of themselves, and that
their marriages are more wisely planned,
and result in a greater average OF happl-
ness than if they had less means of obser-
Walton. My experience is that there are
more marriages between the ladies' and
gentlemen in business in the same Office
than there would be between the same
number of ladies and gentlemen not so
closely associated in business. Their judg-
ment in the choice of life partners is excel
! lent, simply because of their experience.
The boys see many kinds of girls, and the
girls an equal variety of boys, and they
learn to compare the qualities of those
around them"
Really, view of the seven hundred
operators at their work was in itself an an
swer TO many of the questions one desired
| to ask on this subject. The girls and
women were singularly feminine in all
their ways. No attempt at Identification
| had been missed. They were a comedy lot
of young women, and not only were their
faces soft and plump and rosy and their
coiffures modish, but they wore all those
little destinations in the shape of bows and
ribbons and rings and deliberately draped
garments which every properly constituted
member OF the sex so dotes upon. Their
rounded forms gave no testimony against
the healthfulness of their business.